I'm noticing that Slackware 11 consistently uses at least 40% of my CPU at
all times. Am I the only one noticing this?

Ralph Alvy wrote:

> I'm noticing that Slackware 11 consistently uses at least 40% of my
> CPU at all times. Am I the only one noticing this?

What does "top" list as the process using the most CPU?

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Sylvain Robitaille syl@alcor.concordia.ca

Systems and Network analyst Concordia University
Instructional & Information Technology Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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Sylvain Robitaille wrote:

> Ralph Alvy wrote:
>
>> I'm noticing that Slackware 11 consistently uses at least 40% of my
>> CPU at all times. Am I the only one noticing this?
>
> What does "top" list as the process using the most CPU?
>
Well, when I came to the office, I found the problem not there. The
difference between my home box, where the problem exists, is that home box
has a clean install of Slack 11, and the office box has a Slack
installation that was a gradual complete upgrade of all packages from 10.2
to 11.

That said, I remember the process that occupied more of the CPU at home than
other processes on the same box was UDEV.

Ralph Alvy wrote:

> I remember the process that occupied more of the CPU at home than
> other processes on the same box was UDEV.

I'm afraid that someone else will have to offer help. I have no
experience at all with udev. Does the system at work (without the same
problem) perhaps not have udev enabled?

--
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Sylvain Robitaille syl@alcor.concordia.ca

Systems and Network analyst Concordia University
Instructional & Information Technology Montreal, Quebec, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Le Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:45:13 +0000, Ralph Alvy a écrit*:

> Sylvain Robitaille wrote:
>
>> Ralph Alvy wrote:
>>
>>> I'm noticing that Slackware 11 consistently uses at least 40% of my
>>> CPU at all times. Am I the only one noticing this?
>>
>> What does "top" list as the process using the most CPU?
>>
> Well, when I came to the office, I found the problem not there. The
> difference between my home box, where the problem exists, is that home box
> has a clean install of Slack 11, and the office box has a Slack
> installation that was a gradual complete upgrade of all packages from 10.2
> to 11.
>
> That said, I remember the process that occupied more of the CPU at home than
> other processes on the same box was UDEV.


This is "moving land" on "moving sands" so I'll just have a question :-)
Can you get sure you're not using udev and hotplug simulteanously ?
If not certain of the answer you can try to :
# chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug

and reboot

then if all works fine try and put the monkey back at work
# chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug

But, is it for real that in the /etc/rc.d/ you don't have any
file named *.new ?

Loki Harfagr wrote:

> Le Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:45:13 +0000, Ralph Alvy a écrit*:
>
>> Sylvain Robitaille wrote:
>>
>>> Ralph Alvy wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm noticing that Slackware 11 consistently uses at least 40% of my
>>>> CPU at all times. Am I the only one noticing this?
>>>
>>> What does "top" list as the process using the most CPU?
>>>
>> Well, when I came to the office, I found the problem not there. The
>> difference between my home box, where the problem exists, is that home
>> box has a clean install of Slack 11, and the office box has a Slack
>> installation that was a gradual complete upgrade of all packages from
>> 10.2 to 11.
>>
>> That said, I remember the process that occupied more of the CPU at home
>> than other processes on the same box was UDEV.
>
>
> This is "moving land" on "moving sands" so I'll just have a question :-)
> Can you get sure you're not using udev and hotplug simulteanously ?
> If not certain of the answer you can try to :
> # chmod -x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug
>
> and reboot
>
> then if all works fine try and put the monkey back at work
> # chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug
>
> But, is it for real that in the /etc/rc.d/ you don't have any
> file named *.new ?

When I make rc.hotplug not executable and reboot. I still get the same CPU
minimum usage of 40% at all times. And I have no *.new files in /etc/rc.d.

Is there anything wrong with my putting

/etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart

in my rc.local file? The reason I ask is that running that in terminal
normalizes my CPU usage back to 0%.

Ralph Alvy wrote:
> Is there anything wrong with my putting
>
> /etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart
>
> in my rc.local file? The reason I ask is that running that in terminal
> normalizes my CPU usage back to 0%.

My guess would be that as you did your gradual upgrade from 10.2 to
11.0, something got missed in the rc files. In 11.0, udev is in
rc.udev, rc.hotplug, rc.S, and rc.M.

If you get those files from the 11.0 installation media (they're called
rc.udev.new, etc.) it might solve the problem so you don't have to
run the udev restart command in rc.local.

Udev is probably hanging due to a race condition from mismatched rc
scripts. or something...

Chris Sorenson wrote:

> Ralph Alvy wrote:
>> Is there anything wrong with my putting
>>
>> /etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart
>>
>> in my rc.local file? The reason I ask is that running that in terminal
>> normalizes my CPU usage back to 0%.
>
> My guess would be that as you did your gradual upgrade from 10.2 to
> 11.0, something got missed in the rc files. In 11.0, udev is in
> rc.udev, rc.hotplug, rc.S, and rc.M.
>
> If you get those files from the 11.0 installation media (they're called
> rc.udev.new, etc.) it might solve the problem so you don't have to
> run the udev restart command in rc.local.
>
> Udev is probably hanging due to a race condition from mismatched rc
> scripts. or something...

Actually, the box where I was getting the minimum 40% CPU usage is the one
where I installed Slack 11 with a clean install from CDs. The box where I
gradually upgraded from 10.2 to 11.0 via Current, was the one with 0% CPU
usage.

Le Tue, 31 Oct 2006 04:27:09 +0000, Ralph Alvy a écrit*:

> Is there anything wrong with my putting
>
> /etc/rc.d/rc.udev restart
>
> in my rc.local file? The reason I ask is that running that in terminal
> normalizes my CPU usage back to 0%.

There's nothing wrong to do it as a working patch while we could try and
find and solve the origin of the problem :-)

I had this type of issue sometimes and it was always either :

- one device trying to be set by hotplug and udev and the fight
was an horrible thing to view (I spot it with /sbin/bootchartd)

or:

- on a "udev only" system a device was claiming for an IQ a bit too soon.
this would be the case you're on, if so the "correct patch" would be to
identify which one it is and blacklist it, the "correct behaviour" would
be to write a specific udev rule dedicated to it, but that's a dancing
pair of scissors :-)

It may be self-corrected in one of the next three hundreds releases
of udev, that'd be about a week or two to wait ;D)